Does taking birth control pills for a long period of time put you at risk of developing health problems?

Question

I'm just debating on whether to stop taking trinessa(generic for ortho-tri-cyclen)

and already talked to doc about it and she says it's perfectly safe.....
but I have heard otherwise.

Answer 1

No chemical is safe to take for long periods of time. And no drug that stops your body from doing what it naturally wants to do is healthy. PERIOD. If you go to any medicines web site and look at their side effects and possible complications, its a long list. The FDA doesn't care and your doctor doesn't really care either because the doctors are in bed with the companies who make the pills. She is paid to promote their product by giving it and suggesting it to you. I would stop taking them because they DO cause many problems.

Answer 2

Your doctor wouldn't know if birth control tablets are safe, unless she is doing research, is a pharmacist, or has statistics on the health problems connected to taking the pill.
How often do we see newspaper clippings and the side effects in drug books, connected to ovarian cysts and other problems that women can acquire as a result.
Listen to your otherwise, and research further. Otherwise you could be playing roulette with your health

Answer 3

Yes, it's a high risk of major health problems; particularly an overload in female hormones and therefore gender-specific diseases will happen (like breast/cervical cancer and all that). I wouldn't trust the docs anymore...all they really do anymore is prescribe drugs that harm more than help.

Answer 4

I believe that the last article in the referenced link pertains. Remember, there is also the IUD. Good luck.

Answer 5

go buy the book by Suzanne Somers: Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones. buy it at the book store, amazon or ebay. it will tell you that women should never take the pill.
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Birth Control Pills and Breast Cancer
November 22nd, 2006

As Dorian noted in NewsSquawk a few weeks back, a meta-analysis of breast cancer data recently revealed a statistically significant correlation between use of the contraceptive pill prior to full-term pregnancy and premenopausal breast cancer.

I finally got a moment to hop over to Procedings, the journal of the Mayo Clinic that reported on the study, and while the article itself is limited to subscribers, the editorial that offers analysis on the findings is open to all.

First off, I was amazed to read that the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, categorized the contraceptive pill as a carcinogen in 2005. Granted, I’ve been a bit baby absorbed for the last couple of years, but I cannot believe I never read this news anywhere. Did it get any press? If not, why not?

Now for the findings…it appears that women who have ever used birth control pills have a ”small but statistically significant increased risk of breast cancer”. Furthermore, use of the Pill before having one’s first full-term pregnancy is more strongly associated with breast cancer than being on the Pill after having delivered a baby. The association is even stronger where these pre-baby Pill users were on birth control pills for four years or more. (The editorial further notes, “A higher risk of breast cancer for OC use before first full-term pregnancy was first described more than 25 years ago by Pike et al…” - again, I’m very surprised that evidence linking the Pill and breast cancer has been uncovered for so long, with so little press.)....

Posted by MommaSteph.
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from Suzanne's book:

Those of us who were on the original birth control pills for any length of time were actually on synthetic hormones- strong synthetic hormones. Any wonder why women of our generation are under siege from an epidemic of breast and ovarian cancers? There is a link, and you'll learn more about it in this book.

Read on and see if you relate to my scenario: As I said, for twenty-two years, I was on synthetic birth control pills, the original ones that were very strong. I even manipulated my periods with them, if I didn't want to have a period on a particular weekend. I just didn't realize what was in those birth control pills, nor did I understand the dangers of messing with nature.

I did not realize that having only a two-day bleed meant that I was not ovulating fully. At the time, I thought it was great to have such a light period. I did not realize that the importance of ovulation in the human female body is to let the brain know that I was well, healthy, and reproductive. As far as my brain was concerned, I was not reproductive because I was not fully ovulating. An ovulating woman is a reproductive woman.

To believe that the body is not fully ovulating is a dangerous assumption for the brain to make. If the brain perceives us as unable to reproduce, its job, biologically speaking, is to try to eliminate us to make room for the reproductive ones. This is the nature in us. This is the template that was programmed in us from ancient times. Thus, this hormonal imbalance that I unknowingly put myself in was creating a backdrop for cancer. Why? Because we all have cancer in us, but as long as we are hormonally balanced, the brain perceives us as young, strong, and healthy. If we become imbalanced, this signals to the brain that the reproductive system is no longer in working order, and it is in this scenario that the cancer has a chance to come into being.

You see, cancer proliferates in an environment of hormonal imbalance. This is why I believe that Western medicine's standard of care, well-meaning as it is, is treating us incorrectly. Western medicine is looking at everything except the obvious. Western medicine is trying to poison the cancer out of us, further wreaking havoc with our hormonal systems.

Then, to prevent recurrence, we are given hormone ablation drugs such as tamoxifen or Femara, which interfere with the body's ability to read the hormones in some parts of the body. Plus, for many women these drugs cause horrible side effects. To me, it doesn't make sense to take any drug that prevents new hormones from being made in our bodies or to kill off any of the little bit of hormones we might have left. Why has Western medicine been trying to outthink nature? We are given fake hormones that don't replicate exactly what our bodies make naturally, and doctors are expecting them to work in the same way or better. It hasn't worked. Look around. Are the women you know doing well from midlife on? Most everyone has complaints, from mild to severe. No wonder women are in such bad shape.

Once you understand the importance of your brain perceiving the body as reproductive--our "brain template"--it will be easier for you to make decisions for yourself. We assume that the professionals who are taking care of us know what they are doing. But they can't know what they haven't been taught, and unless you find yourself a doctor such as the ones....